AWS License Manager Features

AWS License Manager includes features to help your organization manage licenses across AWS and on-premises. With AWS License Manager, you can define licensing rules, track license usage, and enforce controls on license use to reduce the risk of license overages. You can also set usage limits to control licensing costs.

Set license terms as rules

Enable a centralized team in your organization to interpret software licensing agreements and create rules, which are then used across the organization to govern license usage.

License tracking enforcement

When a new EC2 instance gets launched, the rules created with AWS License Manager are attached using the console, CLI, or API. Rules can be attached whenever an instance gets created using golden AMIs, Amazon EC2 launch templates, AWS CloudFormation templates, or AWS Service Catalog. Once rules are attached, end users in your organization can launch instances and these can be tracked from dashboards in the AWS License Manager console. Licenses and usage can be tracked throughout the lifecycle of an instance. AWS License Manager also tracks any violation of the licensing rules and proactively sends an alert to end users and license administrators. When an instance is stopped or terminated, that BYOL license is released and is available for re-use.

Proactively limit non-compliance

Set hard or soft limits to control license usage and prevent the launch of a new, non-compliant instance. These limits get evaluated during instance launches or while attaching licensing rules to existing instances. When license usage exceeds soft limits, AWS License Manager sends notifications to license administrators and end users with Amazon Simple Notification Service. Notifications are sent as emails, text messages or alerts to inform them that an instance is non-compliant. For hard limits, AWS License Manager blocks new instances from being launched using AWS License Manager’s built-in integration with EC2.

Application discovery

AWS License Manager provides a mechanism to discover software running on existing EC2 instances using AWS Systems Manager. Rules can then be attached and validated in EC2 instances allowing the licenses to be tracked using AWS License Manager’s central dashboard. Additionally, administrators can discover software usage on instances using AWS Organizations by going through a one-time multi-account set-up and creating policies that centrally control AWS service use across multiple AWS accounts.

Centralized license management and reporting

Get a centralized view of license usage across AWS and on-premises based on your licensing rules. This makes it easy to manage incremental licensing purchases, compliance, and vendor audits across your organization. By sharing licensing rules across AWS accounts, a single team can be made responsible for creating, modifying, and deleting licensing rules centrally in one AWS account.

Built-in AWS integration

Seamlessly track license usage throughout the lifecycle of your AWS resources. AWS License Manager is integrated with Amazon EC2, AWS Systems Manager, AWS Organizations, and AWS Service Catalog, and AWS Marketplace. License administrators can add rules in AWS Service Catalog, which allows them to create and manage catalogs of IT services that are approved for use on all their AWS accounts. Through seamless integration with AWS Systems Manager and AWS Organizations, administrators can manage licenses across all the AWS accounts in an organization and on-premises environments. AWS Marketplace buyers can also use AWS License Manager to track bring your own license (BYOL) software obtained from the Marketplace and keep a consolidated view of all their licenses.

Learn more about AWS License Manager Pricing

You can set up AWS License Manager in different configurations, but in general there are three distinct phases: Define rules, enforce them, discover new software.